Recovery 101

Q: How do I get faster?

A: Train more (more intensity, more volume, etc.)

Q: How do I train more without hurting myself?

A: Recovery better.

There really is no such thing as over training, only under-recovering. An athlete's ability to handle high training loads is really a function of how effectively that athlete is recovering. I'm going to try to explain most of the commonly used recovery techniques. I'll start with the obvious:

1. Sleep. Athletes need a tonne of sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can and then have a nap later on. I've heard of equations like 7 or 8 hours plus the amount of time you trained that day. That would mean if you did 4 hours of training, you should sleep 11 or 12 hours at night. Thats a little bit of a lofty goal, but I still try to get 8.5-10.5 hours of sleep in a night. Sleep is when our bodies are most efficient at recovering, so get as much as possible.

2. Fuel. Nutrition is right up there with sleep in terms of importance. Your body has many, many, many reactions necessary for energy production and tissue (re)growth. Eat a balanced diet and keep toxins out. I'm not even going to try to explain how to do this because there are literally volumes of information on the subject. Out of experience though, if I'm at 95% productivity on days where I eat well, I'm usually at like 60-75% productivity on days where I neglect my diet (like yesterday when I got back from a trip and had no food in the house). Make a habit of eating a perfect diet.

3. Take time off. It is normal to be tired in training. In fact, it is a really useful training technique. That being said EVERY good training plan has periods of rest (usually around a week) built into it (the standard would be once per week and every third week). Taking this time off allows your body to absorb (read, rebuild from) all the hard training sessions you've put in over the last few days/weeks.

4. Recovery from each session. After a training session I focus on two main things: putting fuel back into my body and reducing inflammation.

Fueling can get pretty complicated, but basically I have a calorie rich snack with a bunch of protein (often in the form of powder) and a whole bunch of carbs (from many sources). Your body most readily accepts food in the 20-30 minute window following exercise. Not only that, but if you don't fuel up during this time, you'll be using stored energy instead, which can be really hard on your body. You should have a minimum of 1g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight and about 1/5 g of protein per kg of body weight to facilitate muscle glycogen replacement.

Reducing inflammation is the other thing I focus on, because it is responsible for a lot of joint and muscle pain that might be left over from training. I like to use ice, compression, antioxidants and anti-inflammatories primarily. Ice and compression function in similar ways where they increase the pressure in your veins to push inflammation (ice uses your body's response to cold--vasoconstriction--, and compression is pretty self explanatory), blood and any byproducts of exercise out of your muscles (and joints too). These techniques are "necessary", because your veins don't normally have much/any pressure in them, so after exercise, the natural response is to have pooling of blood occur in your muscles (especially legs). A good warm down also fits into this category.

Antioxidants are found in coloured fruits  and vegetables, wine, chocolate and plenty of other sources. They neutralize free radicals which are highly reactive molecules released during exercise. Left to their own devices, free radicals go around reacting with your tissues and can cause a fair bit of damage (muscle and joint pain).

The two main anti-inflammatories I use are advil/ibuprofen and omega-3 fatty acids (mostly from fish, olive oil and other oils and fish oil tablets). I've read that omega-3 fatty acids are much safer to use on a regular basis, so I don't take advil/ibuprofen unless its been a really rough day. Advil may also have a dehydrating effect, so its not a good idea to use during competition/training.

5. Preventative measures. I use stretching and strength as ways to prevent injuries (which result from under-recovery) from occurring. I try to do a little bit of prevention every day, generally relating to injuries I've had in the past. For example, I've had a lot of calf problems, so I stretch those a few times daily and I've had a few instances of ITBS, so I roll my IT bands once a week or more. The bottom line here is that you should expect that past injuries will return, so you should never stop doing your physio exercises.

6. Other. Two more techniques which I'm quite fond of are recovery workouts and hot/cold application.

Recovery workouts are great to do 4-24 hours following a tough workout and up to several days following races. You try to go pretty much as easy as you possibly can for these and the purpose is to just get a bit more blood flowing through the muscles. Think of it as an extra cool down.

Alternating hot and cold can be done in a number of ways, but my favourite is with one of those cloth bags full or beans or oatmeal and an ice pack (other ways would be with a shower or two baths). Ideally, you should have the cold pack on for around 1-3 minutes and the hot pack on for 3-5 minutes and repeat 3-5 times (more if its really bad, but if its that bad, use more than one hot/cold session). I swear by the hot/cold--it has got me out of some really bad muscle damage.

Thats a pretty non-detailed explanation of recovery, but it covers a large range of subjects. Feel free to ask any questions you like.

-T